I’ve gotten a few emails recently asking about my color guard progress, since I haven’t posted about it. (Here’s how my color guard adventure started out…)
I haven’t posted because I have no time! This activity is more time-consuming than I ever planned, because I have to practice so much more at home to still be utterly behind everyone else. It’s the hardest combination of physical activity, mental work (trying to figure out the flag choreography and memorize drill–exactly where I am on the field for every beat of the music), and stress (Perform this in front of people? You must be kidding).
Anyway, my biggest scare and revelation over the past month was that not only do I have to learn to do this flag work that feels impossible to me, but I have to do it while running across a football field in time, in exactly the right spot at each beat. Right.
I can barely struggle through the work standing still. Then we do drill, meaning we start moving across the field with the horns and percussion out there. The field is crowded as we make intricate forms, so you have to know exactly where to be. And do your spinning and tossing at the same time.
It’s like when I go to writing workshops and I learn neat new techniques in poetry or other genres. You do these exercises, and you finally feel like you kind of get it. You at least see what you’re aiming for. And then you realize the exercises are just the first step. Now you have to incorporate it into actual work. And you start to sweat. What made sense in an exercise doesn’t seem to work with your actual novel or picture book or poetry collection. The circumstances are different, you’re disoriented, and then you can’t even remember what it was you were trying to accomplish.
Yep, it’s just like that.
Here’s a bit (12 seconds) of video of me practicing a few counts of work. For this bit, I only even have to run in a straight line, which is "easy." Now that I’m always moving during work, I have to practice in public–ugh. This was Memorial Day, and I was in a preschool parking lot as a storm built up. At least there were no kids watching me from the playground like there usually are:>) The first time I videoed this, I actually didn’t drop it. It was a miracle.
Most of my attempts looked more like this:
And when we do run throughs on the field, with 100+ of us all running around, I’m the one person not doing flag work most of the time because I can’t remember all of it nor do it fast enough to stay in time with the music.
Anyway, that’s how things are going. More updates to come.